


The Breaths In Between

by Minxie



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician)
Genre: KINK: breathplay, KINK: bruising, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-18
Updated: 2011-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-21 12:29:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minxie/pseuds/Minxie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it takes something drastic to make you realize exactly where you should be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Breaths In Between

**Author's Note:**

> **Prereaders:** @aislinntlc, @silentdescant  
>  **Disclaimer:** This is a work of _fiction_ using names and faces associated with actual trufax people. I do not know these people in any way, shape, or form outside of what they show the public. I do this to them because I _like_ to. *smirk*  
>  **AN:** Started as a response to [this](http://glam-kink.livejournal.com/664.html?thread=820888#t820888) [Glam_Kink](http://glam-kink.livejournal.com/) prompt and then kinda took a left turn. So, yeah, what the fuck ever.

Tommy wakes up slow. And happy. Very fucking happy.

He arches his back and curls his toes, a deep rumbling groan spilling out unbidden. His skin is tight and pulling in all the right places and his muscles are loose and pliant. He's aching in ways that have been missing since his life exploded into Adam Lambert's definition of Technicolor, glitter included at no extra charge.

"You're awake."

Tommy cracks an eye open and looks up, lips curling when he spies Lawson, sleep pants slung low on his hips, standing there with a steaming mug in his hand. Running into him at the dinner-slash-kick off party the night before, finding a familiar face in the crowd, had seriously made the dog and pony show worth it.

Coming home with him afterwards and getting the knots from rehearsals worked out of his system was just a bonus.

"Hey there," Tommy replies, much more awake than he has any right to be. Nodding at the mug, he asks, "That for me?"

"Figured you could use it this morning."

Tommy nods in agreement. His throat is wrecked, voice sandpaper rough. "Honey?"

Sliding carefully on the bed beside Tommy, Lawson rolls his eyes. "Three times the amount normal people want, but yeah. Lemon and honey."

Tommy scoots until he's sitting up and curled against Lawson's side. Two sips and one long swallow later, he sighs. "Perfect. Thank you."

A work calloused finger trails over Tommy's throat.

Tommy shudders, recalling the tight feel of Lawson's hand around his throat, the way his lungs had screamed, that first flash of panic giving over to pure need until his vision swam and Lawson was slowly letting him go, letting minute measures of air trickle in.

Lawson pushes on Tommy's neck, right over one of the bruises and says, "Thank _you_ , Tommy Joe."

* * *

Two cups of tea and a hot, steam bath of a shower does wonders for Tommy's voice. Advil and arnica cream, massaged over each welt, each forming bruise, help combat the usual day after stiffness. The remaining difference in his voice, the languid way he moves his body, stretching and lifting carefully, can be explained away easily enough.

The bruises, on the other hand, stand out in stark relief against the normally pale canvas of his skin.

Hues of red and purple and pink splash across Tommy's back and chest, five sharp lines from Lawson's whip overlaying the fuzzy-edged blush from his flogger. A perfect complement to the width of chafed skin circling Tommy's wrists, the tell-tale burn from the rope that held him in place blankets the dark ink of his tats, and the imprint of Lawson's hand spans his throat, thumb on one side of his windpipe and four finger on the other, the arc of a palm connecting the two. They, the bruises and the welts, the stain of color, tell the story to anyone who sees them.

Tommy doesn't intend on anyone seeing them. Not here. Not these people. Not Adam.

He's swimming in one of Lawson's turtlenecks, using the long sleeves and rolled collar to hide the marks, to keep them for himself, holding them close to revel in later, after rehearsal, when he's home alone and can press against a bruise and sink into the spark of pain it'll bring.

"Somebody got laid last night."

Tommy jerks his head up and looks around, stopping when he gets to Sasha's Cheshire grin. "What?"

"Don't play innocent with me, Tommy Joe." She bounces – seriously _bounces_ – over to his side. "You were being the pouty little bass player last night and then, poof, you were gone. Was it that brunette making eyes at you all through dinner?"

"Brunette?" He has no idea who Sasha is talking about.

"Nope." Terrance sounds almost gleeful. It makes Tommy want to squirm around, he's just feeling too good still to actually do it. "It was that dude, that guy Tommy introduced us to. Big guy with those pretty green eyes."

Tommy arches a brow, surprised. He didn't think Terrance was paying any attention when he introduced him to Lawson.

"What?" Terrance asks. "You think I didn't notice the broad shoulders and flawless pecan tan skin? Come on, Tommy Joe, this is me. I see it _all_."

Tommy huffs a laugh. There's been plenty that Terrance has missed. Lawson just doesn't happen to be one of them apparently. "Whatever, man."

Sasha hums and, stepping closer to Tommy, says, "It would explain why our precious little Tommy is in a shirt three sizes too big."

"And still rockin' last night's pants." Terrance smirks, "Yeah, dog, I noticed that too."

He sticks his tongue out and raises a hand, flipping Terrance off. "Shut up, man. Really." Then, thinking that maybe he can get them to stop by just owning his shit, he looks at Sasha, "No, I didn't get laid last night." And then turns to Terrance, "And, yes, I left with Lawson. Now, if that is…"

"Is that a hickey, Tommy Joe Ratliff?" Sasha screeches, drowning out Tommy's final words.

A blush spreads fast and hot over his cheeks and Tommy ducks his head, rolls his entire fucking body to the left – and that doesn't feel that great at all, thanks so fucking much – and he's still too slow to escape Sasha's fucking fingers.

"Oh," she says, stretching the living fuckall out of Lawson's shirt. "That's not a hickey."

"No shit," he snaps, jerking out of her grasp, hands fluttering over his shirt, like making it all smooth again will totally wipe out the fact that – Tommy peeks up through his bangs and counts – that _every-fucking-body_ is all up in his shit, staring at his neck even though he's got the turtleneck back in place and the bruises are hidden beneath layers of dark hunter green. Goddammit.

"Tommy," Adam says slowly, drawing his name out like he's coaxing the truth from some half feral twink instead of a guy that's been in his band for over two years now.

"Don't even, man."

"That's a…"

"I know exactly what it is, was there when it happened."

Finally – thankfully – a voice of reason cuts through the conversation. "We rehearsing today or what?"

He should send Monte a fruit basket. Or at least volunteer to babysit one night.

Adam stares at Tommy hard and frowns. "This isn't over, Tommy Joe."

It is if Tommy has anything to say about it.

* * *

Tommy's flaked out in his sleep pants, hair drippy wet from his shower, and talking to Lawson on the phone when his door rattles under a heavy-handed knock. "Fucking Christ," he mutters, making his excuses to Lawson and tripping over his shoes on the way to answer it.

He just knows it's Adam, going all old school caveman on his front door. No one else would even dream of coming by at midnight-thirty without calling first. Tommy thinks that is a consideration Adam needs to adopt.

He yanks the door open and steps back, expecting Adam to come in off the tiny concrete entry way without invitation like he always does. Instead what he gets is a bellowed, "What the actual fuck, Tommy Joe?"

Then Tommy remembers: he never put a shirt on, his chest and back – and all of the marks, most of them fading into a delicate pink, while a few others have mutated to a dark blue-black-purple – are right there for anyone to see. "For fuck's sake," he groans, following Adam's line of sight to the bruise starbursting out from his nipple. "Just get in here."

Tommy points to the chair in the corner and says, "Sit," and keeps walking over to the hutch, refusing to run and put a shirt on. He opens and closes doors until he has a bottle of very fucking expensive brandy in one hand and two snifters in the other. If there was ever the need for the good stuff, this is it.

He pushes a drink into Adam's hand and waits until he takes one, two, four sips and then, says, "It was completely consensual so stop whatever bullshit drama you got playing in your head right now."

"Drama? Some man..."

"Lawson," Tommy supplies.

Adam flaps a hand and keeps right on talking, "...that you picked up at a party..."

"Who I've known for years," he corrects.

"...choked you and, what," Adam tilts his head to the side, staring at the marks, "took a whip and a flogger to you?"

"Took me down and got me off like I haven't had for two years now." Tommy is totally ignoring the fact that Adam called out exactly what pieces of leather had danced across his skin.

"You have a hand print around your throat." Adam's voice is vibrating, like he's working at holding something back.

It takes everything Tommy has not to crack the fuck up. He manages not to because, dude, Adam is seriously teetering on the edge of a major fucking queen out and as much as Adam's freak outs amuse Tommy, it's way too damn late for that shit tonight. "I do."

"Your wrists, he tied you up."

Tommy arches a brow. That one is kinda obvious.

"You hurt for him," Adam says, his voice a strangled mess of concern and protectiveness laced with what Tommy thinks is jealousy. "And you said you didn't get laid last night."

"Doesn't mean I didn't get off," Tommy replies, and, yeah, totally smirks. The memory of it is good enough to make his dick twitch even with all of Adam's accusations flying about the room. "And he didn't give me anything that I didn't ask for."

Beg for, really, but he doesn't know if Adam wants to hear that.

"You've done this before?" Adam sighs.

Tommy grins. The man is finally ready to listen. "I have."

"With him, Lawson?"

He nods. "No way would I do breathplay with someone I'd just met at a party, an industry party at that."

Adam rolls the snifter between his hands and then, sighing again, drains the glass. "Why didn't I know anything about this?"

The amusement that has been building in Tommy finally breaks free. Laughing, he asks, "Why would I have said anything about it?"

"Because we're friends," Adam's hand flails around, "you love me and I love you."

"Dude," Tommy says, rolling his eyes, "I love my mother too, not ever gonna mention this shit to her."

"You slept with me. We fucked each other."

"I did," Tommy agrees. "And we did, numerous times."

"You didn't tell me what you needed," Adam whispers. "You held back on something you wanted, something… you didn't tell me."

And, ho fuck, Tommy thinks they've hit the crux of the issue. "Would it have changed anything if I had? Would we be together right now, fuck the press and the fans and the litter of kittens that Lane would have had?"

Tommy drops to a crouch in front of Adam, steadying himself with a hand on each of Adam's knees. "Think about it, Adam. You're making it sound like the whole reason we aren't together is because I held back. Do you really believe that?"

Adam stares at Tommy, one hand coming up and cupping Tommy's jaw, his thumb brushing over Tommy's lips. "No, I don't believe that."

Neither of them mention what it really was that tore them apart. The way Adam overplayed Tommy's straight in the press, boxing them in. The grueling effect of living on a tour bus together, the lack of personal space and private time. The fanboys, always available and none with the ability to damage Adam's budding career.

They moved beyond it after the tour ended. Spent time apart and came back as friends. Friends with a history. Friends who love each other wholly, without reserve. Friends who are always skating the edge of the abyss that is a relationship.

"So," Adam says, swallowing hard, "are you and Lawson together, like a couple now?"

The tension in the room spikes.

"Uh," Tommy drops on down to the floor, sitting on his ass and looking up at Adam. Of everything he'd expected, this sure as hell isn't it. "We never were together, it was just, if we were flying solo… We're not together, me and Lawson." Tommy drags a hand through his hair, cuts his gaze away from Adam, looking at some random point outside the window and then, sighing, turns back to Adam again. Adam's happy-smug-pleased smile does nothing to improve Tommy's mood. Warily, he asks, "Why?"

Adam drops his head down, deep red bursting out on his cheeks.

"Adam," Tommy says – _growls_ – as his hearts bangs against his ribcage, thudding loud and hard in his ears.

"I don't like the idea of you hurting for him."

Pissed off – and heart hurt like a little bitch – Tommy rolls to a stand. "And because _you_ don't like the idea of it, I should give it up?"

"I didn't say that," Adam replies.

"But you sure as fuck implied it."

Adam scrubs a hand over his face, blows out a frustrated sigh. "I didn't fucking know, okay? I didn't know and now you're showing up wearing someone else's marks."

"And?"

"And," Adam's voice grows louder, borders on a shout, "I don't fucking like it. You shouldn't be wearing _his_ marks."

Tommy pushes into the space between Adam's legs, gets right into his face. "Why not?"

"Because they should be mine," Adam shouts, his hands coming up towards Tommy and then backing away again, curling into fists that he holds tight at his sides. Quieter, he adds, "If you wear anyone's marks, they should be mine."

Tommy stumbles in his haste to get away from Adam, to move out of arm's reach before he does something fucking stupid. Something more stupid than this conversation already is. "You need to go."

"Tommy…"

"No," Tommy says, shaking his head. "I'm not doing this right now. Leave. Please."

"We can't leave it like this, Tommy," Adam says.

"No, we can't," Tommy agrees. To do that would destroy whatever there is between them, whatever there is that could be between them. "But I'm not doing this now."

Adam holds Tommy's stare for a full sixty second count. It's literally the longest minute of Tommy's life. Then, with a jerky nod, Adam heads to the door. "Let me know when."

* * *

Days tick off – one, then two, then five – until more than a week passes and Tommy still hasn't made a move to talk to Adam. There's no reason, no excuse anywhere near acceptable.

He's just being a fucking chicken shit.

And that just pisses him off even more.

It's just that this reeks of one of those defining moments his mom is always going off about. The outcome of this … this thing with Adam has the potential to make or break him.

He knew there was a reason he'd been keeping some of his personal life fucking well personal.

Frowning at himself in the mirror, Tommy shouts, "Goddammit!" and then snatches up his phone and shoots off a text before he can change his mind.

Ball is in Adam's court now.

It takes Adam all of five minutes – _five_ fucking minutes – to text back. He'll be at Tommy's in thirty.

* * *

Adam doesn't wait for Tommy to open the door, he barely even knocks before he's twisting the knob and just walking in. Looking up from the couch, Tommy snorts. "Come on in, it's open."

He gets a sarcastic looking smirk in return.

"I brought beer." Adam holds up a six pack.

Tommy hums appreciatively, then says, "You don't drink beer."

"You don't drink martinis but you've got gin and vermouth."

As a rejoinder it's pretty good, good enough to make Tommy shut up about the beer anyway. "So."

"So." Adam looks around and, after setting the beer on the coffee table, drops down in the same chair he used before. "You might want to put that away, beer is nasty hot."

Tommy grabs the beer with a shake of his head. Leave it to Adam to throw him off his game within the first two minutes, acting all cool and aloof. They're both so on guard it'll be amazing if anything important gets said. From the kitchen, he calls out, "Surprised you didn't have plans."

"I did," Adam says as soon as Tommy is in the living room again. "This was more important."

Eyes widening, Tommy grunts. "Huh. Okay, then. Um, sorry it took me so long to call and shit."

Adam cocks his head to the side. "Why did it, Tommy Joe? It felt like you were avoiding me."

"I was," Tommy blurts out, mouth running ten steps ahead of his brain. So much for avoiding issues.

Adam looks taken aback, like he didn't expect that answer. "Again, why?"

Shrugging, Tommy says, "At first, because I was waiting for the bruises to fade."

"That happened _days_ ago."

Tommy arches a brow. He didn't realize Adam was watching so closely.

Minutes pass – long, silent strained minutes – and then Tommy sighs. This is getting them nowhere. "I don't know what you want me to say, Adam," he whispers. "I held back, yeah. But even if I didn't, I can't do with you what I do with Lawson."

"You can't," Adam repeats, face losing color fast.

"No," Tommy says, surety ringing in the words. "I can't."

"Why not? You don't trust me enough?" And, oh, that was snide as all hell. Adam is pissed and hurt and lashing out.

"I can't do it because I'm in love with you," Tommy snaps, then, words rushing out, backtracks, " _was_ in love with you. I can't do a part-time play thing with you because I loved you." Tommy closes his eyes, lets his head drop back against the couch. This is going ten times worse than he'd even imagined it could.

"Look," Tommy says into the silence, eyes still closed against whatever he might see, "can't we just keep on with the whole friends thing? We're good at being friends."

"We were better at being lovers." Adam's voice is close, his breath tickling over Tommy's hair and ear and cheek. "And you know it, Tommy Joe. You know it as well as I do."

Tommy squeezes his eyes shut, fights the urge to lean closer to Adam's voice. "And look at how well that turned out." He blinks his eyes open and lets his head loll to the side, focusing on Adam. "It wasn't pretty, Adam. It almost tore it all apart. The band, everything."

"Because we didn't do it the right way."

Tommy can't argue with that. No way they'd have split if they were doing it right. They were fucking good together. Until it went to shit.

They did that really well too.

"And what's the right way?" Because, really, Adam knowing about Tommy's kink is so not going to fix everything that was wrong by the end of the tour. If anything it'll just add one more thing for them to fuck up.

Adam swallows, then licks his lips. "Do what we need to do to make it work. We let too many people in before. Lane, the fans."

"Our families," Tommy adds, thinking about the backlash right before they left for the international leg of the tour.

"Them too," Adam agrees.

Tommy leans in closer to, almost against, Adam. He'd be in Adam's lap right now if the fucking couch didn't have arms. "What else?"

Adam leans in toward Tommy, scooting in until his forehead is pressed against Tommy's temple. "We both got to give a little. I'll go out less, you come with me more. No more holding back, we talk about wants and needs, make it happen so we're both where we need to be."

"Yeah, okay," Tommy murmurs, tired and spent, the whole week-long build up colliding with this… this mad, wonderful, crazy, fucked-up conversation leaving him exhausted, completely drained. He can do that, if he feels Adam is meeting halfway. "No more macking on fans."

Huffing a laugh, Adam says, "No more macking on fans for either of us."

There's one more thing though. One more thing that Tommy has to get out there. He draws back enough to look at Adam eye-to-eye. "I can't keep it in the closet again, Adam. If we do this, there is no way I can pretend like it isn't happening. That hurt in a way I'm not willing to repeat."

"No," Adam says. " _When_ we do this, it'll be like everything else we do: straight up and without regret."

Tommy stares at Adam, searches for any hesitation, anything warning that this is a mistake. He only finds a truth so intense it makes his breath catch. "We're doing this, aren't we?"

"Yeah," Adam whispers, then surges over the edge of the couch and catches Tommy's lips in a kiss. "We are. All the way, baby."

 

* * end * *


End file.
